Since You Asked: Snowy Tahoe can pale next to comforts of home

When we arrived, our cabin had a 6-inch layer of snow on the roof, and the driveway was glazed with ice — so slippery that I whimpered as I tried navigating the few steps to our front door.

Once inside, I was afraid to leave again.

But I was happy anyway, looking out at the snow — the huge drifts of it up against the windows — and at the curtain of icicles that hung from the cabin eaves almost to the ground.

Winter is gorgeous at Lake Tahoe, slippery or not.

It is also a happy reminder of how comfortable we can be at bay level in Marin. No shivering necessary.

Being in snow was a glimpse back at my childhood in New England, when our days were filled with snowmen and snow forts and clumsy experiments with skis. How different to have been raised where winter was truly winter, and summer a time of body-drenching heat and instant rains.

Those of us who moved to California barely remember the trade. We accept our (usually benign) California weather as our just desserts.

When fall comes, I get impatient at long days of rain, but never stop to admit that they're far more tolerable than many days of snow — when someone had to shovel out the driveway, and we had to put on overshoes every time we went outside.

As a mother living in Greenbrae, I forgot to be grateful that I didn't have to bundle up my children every time they went out the door. My poor mother; back in Massachusetts, when my brother and I begged to go outside, she would help us into our snowsuits, hats, galoshes and mittens, then stand by 15 minutes later when we decided to come back in to get warm.

She would help us out of our gear, which she then draped across the iron radiators to dry out — and give off the smell of overheated woolens for the rest of the day.

At Tahoe, Rowland and I watched dozens of skiers curving down the slopes at Homewood. They looked gleeful and graceful and free as birds. Rowland wanted to get out his skis immediately, but I could only see skiing as a pastime from a past time. I had not skied since I was a child, going down the hillside behind our house in Winchester on a pair of wooden skis with loose leather bindings. That kind of skiing is no longer possible. Wooden skis? You've got to be kidding!

As children, we also belly-flopped on our sleds on that Winchester hillside; the sleds would skim downhill, then whiz out onto the ice of the pond below.

I realized that life in the snow had long ago been assigned to sentimental memory.

I could remember with fondness things like snow suits and snowball fights with my brother and Daddy shoveling out the driveway. I could remember icicles hanging from the windows.

In our snug cabin at Lake Tahoe, I felt newly thankful that I had moved so long ago to California — where I never had to shovel snow, slide on sidewalk ice or be really cold ever again.